Audible.com
is the leader in modern audiobook distribution.
BY
MARK LINDERSAY
I’ve always loved reading, but the world has conspired
to make more information available to me even as it steals
the time I have left to investigate it. Between Web sites
that I visit regularly, magazine subscriptions, daily newspapers
and the must-read books that jump the long queue of everything
else I’ve been waiting to read, I’d begun to be
really depressed about the prospect of ever reading all
the books I craved.
It was my curiosity about technology that led me to an Internet
radio show that streamed content, but also made it available
as a download in MP3 format. Streaming media never appealed
to me. It was too much like conventional radio (much of
it is conventional radio) in the way it tied me down to
a particular place and time to listen. But an audio file
freed me to listen anywhere I wanted.
Soon I was breezing through hours of collected material
while doing mundane tasks that hardly taxed my forebrain.
The search was now on for more.
Enter Audible.com, the audiobook alternative to Amazon.com.
Audible’s premise is an elegant, 21st century solution
to the traditional bulk of audiobooks, which have evolved
over the years from monolithic stacks of vinyl to mountains
of tape to shrink wrapped bricks of CDs.
An Audible book is a downloadable file, a specially encoded
MP4 audio document, compressed to different sizes, that
you can play on your computer or on a wide range of portable
digital music players.
The files are large, even if you opt for compact files and
sacrifice audio fidelity. An 18-hour read, like Bill Bryson’s
hugely entertaining A Short History of Nearly Everything
can run 180MB at FM radio quality, but that book on CD would
be spread over 14 discs, not the sort of thing you want
to be sorting through while barrelling down the highway.
The files are also encrypted, making it difficult, though
not impossible, to share your books.
Audible allows you to license three devices for playback,
but the encryption isn’t impossible to crack, though
it requires some manual labour that most readers won’t
have the stamina for.
My own experience with Audible has been overwhelmingly positive.
My sole problem with billing was sorted out when I laid
my woes before the company’s CEO Don Katz after exhausting
the standard help systems. Katz took a personal interest
in the problem and I got a call from a “Team Leader”
(for transactions, I think), who tore through the problem
like wet tissue paper.
Since December 2002, I’ve read 80 books I’d never
have read otherwise, beginning with Shales & Miller’s
Live from New York right through to Adams’ The Salmon
of Doubt. I should say listened to, instead of read, because
while I don’t make the distinction in my head, it gets
weird when someone asks to borrow the book I’m currently
raving about.
Along the way, there have been some pleasant surprises (yes,
Spider Robinson’s Callahan books are as good as they
are said to be) some astonishing revelations (you must read
Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation and Preston’s The
Demon in the Freezer) and some annoying disappointments.
Audiobooks now fill the empty holes in my day when I’m
left staring at the bumper in front of me on the highway.
One day, they might fill the space between my ears.
What
can I listen on?
An
unencrypted MP3 audiobook will play on any common MP3 player,
just as if it were a music file. Audible.com supports a
wide range of players, including smartphones, many common
MP3 players and PDAs. To transfer the files, you’ll
need to work with iTunes on the Mac or the Audible Manager
on the PC which will allow you to set most common portable
players as the destination for your new books.
Rules of thumb for audiobooks
Recent
editions of these books avoid dramatisations in favour of
quality readers who vary pitch, intonation and inflection
subtly to help listeners follow the cast of characters.
Only a few books benefit from ensemble voice acting and
the only one that comes to mind right now is the reading
of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game series. Author-read
books tend to be inferior productions, though some authors
are more tolerable than others and authors like Bill Maher
and Dennis Miller are standout exceptions.
Older self-help books tend to have the most obnoxious dramatisations,
with dramatic orchestral crashes that are both awful and
unnecessary. If this sort of thing annoys you, avoid all
Star Trek audio books, where the budget allows only tinkly
synthesisers.
For B-List audiobooks at bargain prices, try Fictionwise.com
and Telltaleweekly.org.
